After documenting the extent of missing homicide data, this paper presents two methods of homicide rate adjustment that compensate for this problem. A comparison of adjusted and unadjusted homicide rates across cities, metropolitan areas, States, and regions indicates that while the two are highly related for family, acquaintance, and stranger homicide, unadjusted figures result in underestimation. A second source of inaccuracy, resulting from police departments' failure to submit monthly homicide reports, also is discussed; a weighting procedure is presented to adjust for nonreporting agencies. Adjusting for these missing data will increase the accuracy and reliability of rate calculations and the estimation of theoretical models. 7 tables and 19 references. (Author abstract modified)
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